Page 87 of Spin Serve

Aspen smiled at the term of endearment and said, “I think I should ask you out on a real date before you call me that again, right?”

“I’ve called you that before. You were just asleep last time when I kissed your forehead.”

“You… You’ve kissed my forehead?”

“When you got back from Italy and fell asleep on the couch.”

“I missed that?” she asked.

Kendra chuckled and said, “I’ll do it again, but yeah, maybe ask me out before that.”

“What’s stopping you from asking me out?” Aspen teased back.

“Nothing. But I do have to go now. I’m running late for work.”

“Tease,” Aspen joked.

Kendra laughed and said, “Let DJ sleep. Then, talk to her.”

“I will,” she replied. “I miss you, Kendra.”

“I miss you, too,” Kendra said.

CHAPTER 28

Kendra wished, yet again, that she could be there to support Aspen and DJ in person. Instead, she was covering another NWSL game and two more after that. She loved women’s soccer, but her brain couldn’t focus on it, not when Aspen was playing important international volleyball matches and was struggling with her partner.

Their match against the Brazilian number one team was at six in the morning Kendra’s time, and since she didn’t have to be at the field until noon, she had more than enough time to watch the match on her laptop first, shower, eat breakfast, and then head out for work. It meant that she’d gotten little sleep because her flight had been late getting in, and the ride from the airport to the hotel had been about an hour, thanks to a car accident on the highway, but it would be worth it, she hoped. Kendra powered up her computer and opened her browser, finding the streaming site before she even got up to pee. When she got back to the bed, she settled the computer in her lap and waited for it to start. She yawned a few times as she checked her email, but as soon as she heard the opening music, indicating that the match was about to begin, she toggled over to the other browser tab and sat up straight.

Since it was streaming, they hadn’t covered the player warm-ups and weren’t showing the intros, so it went straight into the match. The Brazilians had the first serve, and Kendra tried to check Aspen and DJ’s body language. Had they made up? Were they okay? She and Aspen hadn’t gotten a chance to talk again, outside of a few text messages where Aspen had been pretty vague, and Kendra hadn’t wanted to press and stress Aspen out the night before a big match.

DJ had a great kill off a good set from Aspen, and Kendra watched them slap hands in the middle of the court and say something to each other. DJ smiled, which made Kendra feel a little better. Ten minutes later, Aspen and DJ were up by one point. Kendra didn’t typically bite her nails, but she was now. This was the opening match, and it had been decided by a draw, so while the TV network would have wanted this to be the final to get the most viewers on the two world-class teams, they wouldn’t get it this time. It was a single-elimination tournament, so in the first match of the event, one of them would be out.

Brazil came back with an excellent serve that DJ couldn’t get to, and they ended up with nineteen points to Aspen and DJ’s eighteen. Kendra worried they were about to lose the first set, but Aspen surprised her when they got the serve. When she should’ve been aiming for something to just go over the net for safety, Aspen didn’t do that at all. She swung hard, and that serve went right between the two Brazilians.

“When in a fiddle, go down the middle,” Kendra said to herself, using the common phrase in beach volleyball that talked about confusing the two players by serving between them instead of at them.

It was now tied at nineteen, with Aspen still at the line. Aspen checked DJ’s hand signal and nodded more to herself than to DJ, who was looking across the net at the other team. Then, she served a tough floater that curved in the wind and landed in the sand, earning her a second ace in a row. They now had set point, and Kendra held up her arms, nearly knocking over her laptop, which she grabbed quickly. The pro-Brazil crowd went silent, probably not expecting this, given how well their team had played. Aspen blew out a breath and spun the ball in her hand.

“Come on, babe,” Kendra said out loud to no one and liked the idea of getting to call Aspen that.

She also liked that Aspen was taking whatever they were doing seriously because she wanted to take it seriously, too. She worried that she might have turned Aspen off a little on their call when she’d told her that they needed to talk prior to them going any further, and she didn’t want to bring it up, but the reality was that Aspen didn’t know how the scar on Kendra’s chest impacted her love life.

The travel part was also a problem for the women of her past, and she knew Aspen understood what it meant to travel for work and that, in some cases, they’d get lucky because they’d be traveling to the same places, but Rio was a perfect example of a time when they couldn’t be together. There would be more times like this in their future, where they would have to go weeks without seeing each other, depending on their schedules and how they lined up, so they’d have to talk about how they wanted to handle that, but Kendra’s biggest worry was about the fact that she didn’t want anyone seeing her naked.

Her shirt not coming off during sex had been an issue before, and not showering with her romantic partners had occasionally been a problem as well. Maybe her ex suggesting she go to therapy about it was a good idea, but Kendra hadn’t been ready to hear it. She’d heard Aspen call her beautiful. She knew in her heart that Aspen wouldn’t be bothered by her scar, but every time she pictured them getting intimate, imaginary Aspen would reach for Kendra’s shirt to pull it off, and Kendra would stop her. Not wanting things to go too far first, she’d decided to talk to the woman instead before they did anything like that. If Aspen had a problem with it, they’d have to talk about it, and Kendra might have to say goodbye to the only person she’d felt this strongly about in years.

“Maybe ever,” she let out.

Aspen served the ball, and Brazil returned it over the net. Aspen was there to pass it up to DJ, who set her for the kill. Aspen swung, but it was blocked. She was able to pass it to DJ, though, and Kendra watched DJ turn her head to see where the other Brazilian player was before she tapped it over and earned them the set point.

“Hell, yeah!” Kendra’s arms went up again, but this time, she managed not to nearly drop her computer.

The feed went dark between sets, so she got up and started making a cup of coffee on the in-room coffee maker. By the time she was back in front of her computer, the match had restarted. She watched Aspen and DJ score the first four points before they finally lost the serve. Then, she watched them win it back again and again, and when they won the second set and the match as a result, Kendra breathed a huge sigh of relief. This was a big win for them, and it made the rest of the tournament seem like it was going to be easy by comparison.

Kendra got out of bed, carrying her coffee to the bathroom, where she showered, and as she was searching through the clothes she’d hung up for what she wanted to wear, her phone dinged, and she rushed to check it.

Aspen Ashley: Were you able to watch?

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